person in this auditory needs instruction in some one of these articles.

1. The first vice of conversation, which the apos tle condemns, is swearing. The first seasoning, which he recommends to us, is the salt of piety. Sad necessity for a christian preacher, preaching to a christian audience! Sad necessity, indeed, obliged to prove that blasphemy ought to be banished from conversation! however it is indispensibly necessary to prove this, for nothing is so common among some called christians as this detestable vice. It is the effect of two principles, the first is a brutal madness, and the other is a most false and fanciful idea of superior understanding and free and easy behaviour.

It is a brutal madness that puts some people on swearing. Our language seems too poor to express this disposition, and the words brutality and madness are too vague to describe the spirit of such as are guilty of this crime. These, shall I call them men or brute beasts? cannot be agitated with the least passion, without uttering the most execrable imprecations. Froward souls, who cannot endure the least controul without attacking God himself, taxing him with cruelty and injustice, disputing with him the government of the world, and not being able to subvert his throne, assaulting him with murmurings and blasphemies. Certainly nothing can be so opposite to this salt of conversation as this abominable excess. They who practise it ought to be secluded from christian societies, yea to be banished even from worldly companies. Thus the supreme Lawgiver, able to save and to destroy, hath determined. Read the

ror.

case.

twenty-fourth of Leviticus, "The son of an Israelitish woman blasphemed the name of the Lord," ver. 11, &c. At this news all Israel trembled with horThe prudent Moses paused, and consulted God himself what to do in this new and unheard-of The oracle informed him in these words, Bring forth him that hath cursed, without the camp, and let all that heard him lay their hands upon his head, and let all the congregation stone him. And thou, Moses, shalt speak unto the children of Israel, saying, Whosoever curseth his God shall bear his sin, and he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him." Have you attended to this sentence? It not only regards the blasphemer, it regards all that hear him. If you be sincere members of the congregation of Israel, you ought, though not to stone the blasphemer, yet to declare your abhorrence of his conduct, and, if he remain incorrigible, to endeavour to rid society of such a mon

ster.

Human legislators have treated such people with the utmost rigor. The Emperor Justinian condemned blasphemers to death.* Some have bored their tongues. Others have drowned them. Others have branded them with a red hot iron in the forehead, intending, by fixing this mark of infamy in a

*Constitut. lxxi. a lxvi.

Beyerlinc. Theatr. vit. human, tom. iii, page 139.

Ibid.

§ Paul. Emil. de gest. Franc. fol. 164. pag. 2. edit. de Vascos can 1576.

part so visible, to guard people against keeping company with a blasphemer. It was Lewis the ninth, a king of France, who was the author of this law. I cannot help relating the words of this prince in justification of the severity of the law. A man of rank in the kingdom having uttered blasphemy, great intercession was made for his pardon; but the king's answer was this, I would submit, said he, to be burnt in the forehead myself, if by enduring the pain I could purify my kingdom from blasphemy.

We affirmed, further, that some people habituated themselves to swearing from false notions of glory and freedom of conversation. A man sets up for a wit in conversation, he pretends to conciliate the esteem of his company, and affects to put on the air of a man of the world, free from the stiffness of pedants. (This is not an invention of mine, this is a natural portrait, my brethren, and some of you gave me the original.) This man, I say, having taken into his head this design, and not being able to derive means of succeeding from his genius, or education, calls in the aid of oaths; of these he keeps various forms, and applies them instead of reasons, having the folly to imagine that an oath artfully placed at the end of a period renders it more expressive and polite; and, judging of the taste of his hearers by his own, inwardly applauds himself, and wonders what heart can resist the power of his eloquence. An elocution mean and contemptible, and fitter for an unbridled soldiery than for those that command them. An elocution directly opposite to the words of my text, "Let your speech be seasoned with

salt." Never let the name of God go out of your lips without exciting such sentiments of veneration in your minds as are due to that sacred name. Never speak of the attributes of God in conversation without recollecting the majesty of that Being to whom they belong. "Accustom not thy mouth to swearing," said the wise son of Sirach, "neither use thyself to the naming of the holy One; for he that nameth God continually shall not be faultless," Ecclus. xxiii. 9, 10. The first vice of conversation to be avoided is swearing and blasphemy, the first seasoning of conversation is piety.

2. The apostle prescribes us a seasoning of chas tity. Against this duty there are some direct and some oblique attacks. Direct violaters of this law are those nauseous mouths, which cannot open without putting modesty to the blush, by uttering language too offensive to be repeated in this sacred assembly; yea, too filthy to be mentioned any where without breaking the laws of worldly decency. We are not surprised that people without taste, and without education, that a libertine, who makes a trade of debauchery, and who usually haunts houses of infamy, should adopt this style: but that christian wonen, who profess to respect virtue, that they should suffer their ears to be defiled with such discourse, that they should make parties at entertainments, and at cards with such people, and so discover that they like to have their ears tickled with such conversation, is really astonishing. We repeat it again, decorum, and worldly decency are sufficient to inspire us with horror for this practice. And shall

the maxims of religion affect us less than humanrules? "Fornication, and all uncleanness," said St. Paul, "let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints," Eph. v. 3.

Barefaced immodest discourse is not the most dangerous, for it ought to be then least tolerated, because it is then most execrable, when it is uttered equivocally. There is an art of disguising obscenity, and of conveying poison the most fatally, by communicating it in preparations the most subtile and refined. Men in general choose rather to appear virtuous than to be so, and, to accommodate such people, there is an art of introducing vice under coverings so thick as to seem to respect the modesty of the company, and yet so thin as fully to expose it. A fine and delicate allusion, a lively and original tour of expression, an ingenious equivocation, a double meaning, an arch look, an affected gravity, these are the dangerous veils, these the instruments that wound us when we are off our guard. For what can you say to a man who behaves in this manner? If you suffer his airs to pass without censure, he will glory in your indulgence, and take your silence for approbation. If, on the other hand, you remonstrate, he will tax you with his own crime; he will tell you that your ear is guilty, his language is innocent; that immodesty is in your heart, not in his expressions; and that of two senses to which his language is applicable, you have adapted the immodest, when you ought to have taken the chaste meaning.